


To Mend What Has Been Torn

by Rin_the_Shadow



Category: Dororo (Anime 2019)
Genre: Adopted Children, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Discussion of Ableism, Families of Choice, Forgiveness, Found Families, Gen, Nonverbal Communication, Parent-Child Relationship, Past Child Neglect, Platonic Cuddling, Reconciliation, Self-Blame, because apparently that is this main trio's thing now, discussion of past child neglect, internalized ableism, probably going to be a group nap in there at some point, semi-verbal character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-22
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2020-12-28 05:26:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21131381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rin_the_Shadow/pseuds/Rin_the_Shadow
Summary: Post-ending for the "With Eyes Unclouded" endgame branch, with some overlap in the first chapter.In the aftermath of Asura's defeat, Nui no Kata attempts to mend the relationship between herself and her sons. It cannot be what it would have been before. But perhaps it can be something other than what it was.





	1. Weaving With Broken Threads

Both her sons had made it. Some part of her was still trying to wrap her mind around that.

When the doctor, Jukai, had brought them out of that burning castle and she had taken Tahomaru, she had felt how warm he was. Had he been a small child, she would have hovered over him, cooling his body with wet cloths and humming softly, rocking him in her arms when he was cool enough to do so, or perhaps when he was too warm and she feared losing him.

But Tahomaru was not a child. She had missed that long ago. Even there, she could attest that he had not been sickly as a child.

As she had knelt beside them, watching Jukai mending the wounds on their bodies and working alongside him to cool them, she could only think of how close she had come to losing them, how close she still was to losing them.

Why hadn’t she done more to protect them before? She could have run to Tahomaru on the battlefield that day. She could have pieced things together and arrived sooner, before they had even fought. She could have given Tahomaru the full truth before her husband had returned, stopped him from twisting his thoughts in the first place. She could have done more to be there for him as a child, expressed more interest in his sword training or his time spent playing with Hyogo and Mutsu. She could have refused to have her eldest taken from her, and let the brothers grow up together…Why hadn’t she?

She could never quite bring herself to care for something until she was in danger of losing it. Just when had she become this way?

* * *

When Tahomaru awoke, there was so much she had wanted to say to him, so much she still hadn’t known how to say. So she had settled for pulling him close to her and whispering, “How lonely you must have been. Please, forgive me for not noticing sooner.”

It wasn’t entirely true. There had been times before where she would notice his face fall or hear him cry out in frustration. She could still remember the conversation they’d had not even a year ago, in which he had finally said what he must have been thinking all that time. “It’s not the wars you don’t like, but me!”

She had understood what she was supposed to do and what she ought to have felt, and yet her legs and voice would not obey her. In some ways, that was worse. What was more, it would have sounded like a lie. If she had been aware, but unable to act before, what reason did she have for that to change now?

“Mother, I…” His breath hitched several times, but he didn’t pull away until she released him. He swallowed, not quite looking at her. “I’m…Jukai said I could stay with Hyakkimaru until he wakes up. I know you had wanted to speak with him before, but…I think he can hear you now, if…”

She shook her head. It would be too much like talking to a corpse, with what had come before. It was better to wait until he could answer her. Still, she reached for him and began to card her fingers through his hair.

Would he be able to answer her, though? When she’d seen him before, he hadn’t spoken. She tried to recall the first time she had seen him. Had he spoken then? Could he speak?

She wasn’t even sure if he recognized her. Perhaps he only remembered what she had done at Banmon. Had he understood what she was trying to do, or had it only been a series of strange and frightening motions to him? Or did he understand and believe it was his own fault?

And Tahomaru…what had he felt through all this? It had been so easy to slip back into old habits the second her eldest had been indicated. So then, was she condemned always to focus on only one or the other?

“I was surprised,” she spoke, continuing in her motions, “when Hyogo told me you had gone to your brother. I had thought you intended to hunt him, and he and Mutsu would not tell me otherwise until they were certain we were alone. I won’t ask what changed your mind, but I’m glad you did.”

“Of course,” Tahomaru agreed, still avoiding her gaze. “You lost him once before, only to be threatened with losing him again.”

It wasn’t an accusation, yet it still stung. “I nearly lost you as well.”

He turned to wrap a hand around Hyakkimaru’s wrist, swallowing hard. His throat worked, trying to form a reply, shaking his head.

“Tahomaru.” She stretched out her free hand until it brushed his cheek, and he jolted, eye wide as he finally looked at her. “I’ve never hated you. I won’t pretend that I have been anything resembling a mother to you, but please believe me when I say I have never hated you.”

This time, his tears really did start flowing, even as he struggled to blink them back, trying to scrub them away with his sleeves when that failed, and Nui reached out for him, pulling him to her once again, beginning to rub up and down his back and carding her fingers through his hair. It felt almost mechanical, like her arms didn’t quite belong to her. For a moment, she wondered if that was how Hyakkimaru felt, when he’d had his wooden limbs.

And she knew she had held him as a baby—she had memories of it. But holding Tahomaru now, it almost felt wrong, as though she had never done so before. But this could be a start. Couldn’t it? It could at least be a start. She had to believe that.

* * *

She had begun to tend to some of the injured during the night. She had been powerless these sixteen years, unable to do anything to stop the deal, to stop her crumbling relationship with her husband, even to move or feel at times. It was nice to at least be able to give something back to the land she had passively condemned—even taking back something for herself in the process.

Yet when Mutsu had found her one night, her face grim, she had felt herself struggling not to return to that powerlessness. “Lord Tahomaru sent me to find you. It’s Hyakkimaru.”

She forced herself to breathe, standing and moving to her. Mutsu may not have been particularly expressive, but she knew she had not forgiven her for her neglect of Tahomaru. She would not have expected it. “Take me to them.”

She knew where they were. She had been there many times before. But Mutsu only nodded and led her to their makeshift sickroom.

Even before she crossed the threshold, she heard the cries coming from her oldest and her heart sank. She entered to find Tahomaru clinging to him, holding him against him and trying to stroke his hair as she had done for him.

The child she had freed from the cells, Dororo, was at his other side, rubbing a scrap of cloth over the inside of his forearm. Yet he was inconsolable, trembling and whimpering as though he couldn’t even register they were there, in so many words she could not recognize, yet there was one he murmured again and again. _Mama_.

Some small part of her knew it would not be any better than on the field when she called his name, but a larger, almost desperate part of her wanted to hope. She would not cry out for him this time—she must have scared him by doing so before—but she dropped to her knees and reached for him, brushing a hand against his temple.

Almost immediately, he flinched away with a whine and she recoiled. Dororo turned to her, eyes wide, lips parted as if to say something. An apology. An explanation. Or perhaps both. But then he faltered and turned back to Hyakkimaru.

Had she hurt him, somehow? Had she always been hurting him, and he had simply been unable to respond before? But she had seen enough of how Tahomaru had been towards him. On the field where Hyakkimaru had regrown his arms, Tahomaru had held out a hand and asked her to wait a moment. If she were hurting him, he would have stopped her.

Moments later, she turned as Hyogo entered, Jukai close behind him, and knelt beside the boys. Looking more lost than she could ever remember seeing him, Tahomaru almost immediately loosened his grip as Jukai felt along Hyakkimaru’s face and neck, relinquishing him entirely as he lifted the boy into his arms.

For a split second, he went rigid, and Nui wondered if he might even be unable to recognize his father in that state. But then he slackened, still crying, but curling into the man and letting him rock him back and forth as he whispered reassurances almost too softly for anyone else to hear.

She released a breath she hadn’t known she was holding, her body almost numb as Tahomaru found Hyogo and leaned against him. This was fine, she told herself. Her eldest couldn’t be expected to recognize her after sixteen years and in such a frightened state. Her youngest could not be expected to instinctively turn to her after fifteen years learning it would earn no response. He had allowed her comfort earlier. But she could not expect everything to mend immediately.

Drawing another breath, she bowed her head and prayed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was at least partially inspired by some conversations we've had in a Dororo Discord server regarding Nui's character. She's been a hard one for me to pin down, and I had hoped that by writing her, I might begin to get a better grasp of her character, much like what happened with Mutsu back in June. The other half was inspired by the stage play and my interpretation of her character there, as well as an apparent need to have no less than three Dororo fanfics in progress at once for some reason.
> 
> At the moment, I see Nui as someone who kind of emotionally closed herself off after being forced to give up Hyakkimaru, almost a stress response, if you will. I also agree with the headcanon that she probably has some form of chronic depression, and probably also tends to blame herself for things that are out of her control.
> 
> Tahomaru's line about it not being war she dislikes, but him, is something I pulled from the stage play. At the moment, I don't remember if he says it in the anime or not, but it seemed like something he would say, and which I think is important to understand their relationship from his perspective. Really, a lot of this chapter in general is just to act as exposition and recap the events of With Eyes Unclouded from Nui's perspective, since that will set up a lot of what happens next.
> 
> At the moment, I haven't decided if Kagemitsu will be in the story or just mentioned, and I suppose that largely depends on where I end up going with it.
> 
> In any event, please let me know what you think!  
~Rin


	2. Hindsight, Foresight, and Sight in General

As she watched them, she couldn’t help wondering how her eldest might have turned out, had he grown up in her home instead of with the doctor. For her, there was no question of “without the deal,” because it would have been made no matter what, whether at his birth or sometime later. There was no point in mourning for someone who had never existed—as if the deal had replaced him with someone else. She could at least claim that much to her conscience, if nothing else.

Over the past few days, Jukai had led both boys through a series of motion exercises to ensure they could still walk and move correctly after days of being mostly unconscious—and for Hyakkimaru, to make sure he could properly use his new hands. However skilled he might have been in crafting prosthetics, there was always going to be a difference in wooden fingers versus flesh and bone.

Once he had deemed his hands sufficiently-healed, he had also begun to work with him on gripping and holding. Every so often, he would stop and check his hands, making sure he hadn’t torn them open a second time. Most of the time, he ended up wrapping bandages over his palms, but he had started leaving his fingers free.

As he finished this, she asked him how Hyakkimaru’s hands were healing. He admitted that by this point, the bandages were mostly to block him from picking at them before they finished healing. But they were no longer bleeding, and they were progressing as he would have preferred them to.

And of course, having his fingers free would give him another outlet besides trying to work the bandages off. If he could run his fingers over things and feel them, it might also make him less interested in messing with his sword scars.

At that moment, Hyakkimaru was running his fingers over the bandages, his face neutral, but relaxed. She felt a tiny flicker of joy that she could tell that much, and wondered if she would ever be able to read him the way Jukai did.

“Oh! You got your fingers unwrapped!” She jolted as Dororo hopped over and sat next to him. “Can I see?”

For a moment, his fingers curled over his palms, and she wondered if he was going to pull them away. But then, without uncurling them, he held his hands out to the child, who wrapped his own around them, grinning and bouncing on his heels.

Hyakkimaru gave a little jolt, staring at their entwined fingers like he couldn’t quite believe what he was looking at, mouth open, brows raised. His reaction only seemed to fuel Dororo’s excitement. “Can you feel that, bro?”

He gave a tiny, stilted nod.

“Do you like it?”

He nodded again, beginning to imitate the way Dororo bobbed their hands up and down. Seconds later, he pulled him into a hug. It was a clumsy, unsure motion which seemed almost out of place on him, and something about that alerted her that she was intruding on something which was probably not her place to watch, not when her son was still unsure of her. Maybe not even if he had been.

She stood and left the hut, intending to see where she was needed and what she could do, and nearly bumped into Tahomaru as he approached, Hyogo and Mutsu in tow. He startled as she stopped herself, stiffening as she held out a hand to brace him in the split second before they collided.

It wasn’t like him not to pay attention to where he was going. At least, she couldn’t recall him being this way. Based on Hyogo and Mutsu’s response, the slight raising of their brows, she could assume they didn’t think it was like him, either.

“Mother!” he gasped. “Is everything all right?”

For a moment, his question almost didn’t register. Why would things not be all right? And then it hit her. Tahomaru must have thought that if she wasn’t with her eldest, it was because something had happened to require her leaving the room.

“Oh,” she released his arm. “Yes, everything is fine. Jukai says that your brother is healing as he should be. Were you heading to see him?”

He gave a small nod.

_Ah, yes. _“And you? Are you well?” _You aren’t pushing yourself too hard?_

“My brother took the worst of it for me,” he mumbled, fidgeting like he wanted to start walking, but wasn’t sure if he could.

“Do you mind if I walk with you, at least until you arrive at his hut?”

Something in her statement made him tilt his head in confusion. “Are you certain everything is all right?”

She smiled softly, reaching to smooth his sleeve before changing her mind. If he wasn’t expecting her to touch him, it might only convince him something _was _wrong. “Yes, I’m sure.”

He swallowed, then nodded a shaky nod, and she fell into step beside him. There was so much she wanted to say to him. How proud she was that he had decided to seek another solution besides the demons, how well he seemed to be recovering from his time in the blaze…how she wished she could have been there to watch him grow up, both then, and before.

“Mother?” his voice pitched upwards as he reached out to touch her sleeve, hand hovering so close, yet unable to close itself around the fabric.

“Don’t worry, Tahomaru. I’m fine.”

There was a slight catch in his step. If she hadn’t been looking for it, she wondered if she would have caught it.

“Is _Hyakkimaru _all right?” he asked, eye wide, struggling to keep the worry off his face.

Hadn’t she mentioned that before? Perhaps he had forgotten, since he seemed so anxious. No doubt he had been under a lot of stress—since waking up, at the very least. Perhaps he had lived like this for much longer, and no longer knew how not to feel it.

“Yes,” she answered. “He’s fine. Dororo had come to see him just before I stepped out.”

“Has he said anything about wanting to go out?” Since waking up, Hyakkimaru had refused to step outside of that hut. Nui had thought this was normal—he had been unconscious or half-conscious for several days, and probably still felt too weak to be up and about for long. But no one else seemed to think so. Since he was a small child, since he had gotten his first set of prosthetics and been able to do any more than crawling inside his own home, he had always preferred the outdoors. Jukai planned to speak to him about it, if he continued.

Nui shook her head. “No, he hasn’t spoken to me.”

“Ah.” Tahomaru looked away, staring at the door. “If…you would like to come with me, Jukai is—” He suddenly stopped, turning to Hyogo and Mutsu. “Oh, but, the two of you…will you be all right with…?”

“My lord?” Mutsu’s voice was carefully neutral, only the slightest hint of a question, even if her meaning was clear.

Tahomaru’s brow furrowed and he gave an annoyed scoff. “Don’t give me that. Are the two of you all right with my mother joining me, or not?”

“I have no problem with it.” Hyogo answered first.

“I’ll be fine,” Mutsu said. _It isn’t as though she’ll be watching **us**_**. **

Tahomaru definitely caught her meaning, shooting her a look which made that much clear, but also refused to call her on it. And Nui was grateful for that much, because it wasn’t as though she could blame her for feeling that way, not after what she had watched these fifteen years.

Perhaps he understood that, too.

Still, they entered the hut. Hyogo and Mutsu crossed to the other side of the room, where Jukai was, and Nui reminded herself not to watch. No matter what concern she may have felt for them, Mutsu had made it clear on multiple occasions that she didn’t appreciate being watched in that vulnerable state, and she suspected Hyogo felt the same way, even if he wouldn’t voice it.

Tahomaru, on the other hand, watched for half a second before turning to Dororo and his brother, who was currently occupied with pacing around a small stretch of the room.

“Hey, bro! You know there’s a lot more space outside if you’re getting stir-crazy in here!”

Hyakkimaru simply shook his head and continued walking.

“Why not?” Dororo huffed. Nui had the feeling this was far from the first time they’d had this exact conversation.

He stopped for a moment, looked at the child, and then continued on.

“_Huh?!_” Evidently, he had said _something_, even if it was too quiet for her to hear. “Bro, what does that even mean? Hey!”

And with that, Dororo launched himself, catching Hyakkimaru around the middle and wrapping his legs around.

“Ah!” Tahomaru gave a cry and scrambled to catch him, trying to keep him in a relatively upright position even as Hyakkimaru squirmed to try to throw him off.

Once he had finally managed to separate them, Tahomaru gave a little sigh. “Really, Dororo. You have to be more careful while he’s still recovering.”

“Pshh,” Dororo waved his hand. “It’s not like that’s going to break him. I would’ve let go before that. Isn’t that right, bro?”

Hyakkimaru nodded.

“Brother, please!” Tahomaru let his voice take on an almost whining edge, which surprised her. When it was Nui and her husband, he had always tried to keep his voice even.

In that moment, she almost thought she saw the edge of her eldest’s lip curling upwards. But then Tahomaru continued, “He is right, though. You can’t stay in here forever.”

That tiny smile faded in an instant, and he brought his hands to rub against his bandages, the motion stiffer and harsher than before.

The other two seemed to notice. “No, don’t worry. I won’t force you.”

“It’s okay, bro, we can figure something out.” Dororo moved to sit slightly in front of him. “Okay, so how come you don’t want to go outside?”

Whatever he had done earlier, he must have done so again, because Dororo ran a hand through his hair with a huff. “Okay, so, are you saying you don’t have words for it? ‘Cause I can help you if you need words.”

There was a tiny flicker, not quite a nod, but the boys must have seen it as close enough.

“Okay.” Dororo popped his back and then shook his arms out, as if he was shaking off his earlier annoyance. “Is it too many people?”

He had to think about that one for a moment, but he shook his head.

“Nah, I figured. You would’ve known how to tell me that one. Umm…” he thought. “So then probably not noise either, you know how to say that.”

Something lit up in the boy and he snapped his fingers, as if he had thought of some memory which made everything fit. “Stuff looks wrong? Is that it? Stuff looks wrong?”

It might not have been quite right, but he seemed to have hit something, because Hyakkimaru gave a soft gasp and grabbed for Dororo’s hands. “Yes, wrong. Too…much, too…”

He paused, doing that motion again, and Nui realized what he’d been doing all this time—squinting his eyes.

In an instant, both boys stiffened, realization dawning on them.

“You mean it’s too bright?”

“Bright?” he echoed. Had he never heard of it before? Almost in that same instant, another thought crossed her mind. No, of course he wouldn’t know what bright was. Even if he had heard the word, it wouldn’t have had any meaning to him before.

Now the question was how to explain it.

“It means there’s a lot of light,” Tahomaru began, a slight scowl making it clear he didn’t like that explanation. “You know how at night, we use lamps so that we can see?” He waited a moment before continuing. “The light is what lets us see in the dark. For you, there hasn’t been that issue, since you saw souls…”

There was another pause as he pursed his lips and lowered his brows. He must have distracted himself with another thought. He shook his head, turning to rest a hand on his elder brother’s shoulder. “But those lamps can only light small spaces, so we call them dim. For something like the sun, which lights up the whole sky, we call that bright. And, if something is too bright, then when you look at it, it hurts your eyes.”

As he said that last phrase, Hyakkimaru gave that same gasp of recognition he had before. “Yes, hurts.”

“Then it’s too bright for you.”

“Yes,” he nodded. “Too bright. Hurts.”

Dororo brought his hand to his chin. “Hm…maybe we could ask your papa if you can go outside some time when the sun’s not up?”

“_Mama_.” She was almost amused at the long-suffering tone her eldest had taken.

“Right…” Dororo only half-heard him, already onto his next thought. “Oh! Maybe we could try…”

He bent around, digging into a cloth bag at his waist. “Hang on, I think I’ve still got it. Geez, bro, why didn’t I give it to you? You’re the one who uses it…Ah!”

The child hopped up, triumphant, holding a strip of cloth between his fingers. “Okay! I think this will work. Bro, can you hold your hair out of your face for me?”

“It’s going to be too big like that,” Tahomaru observed. “You’ll have to fold it if you don’t want to smother him.”

“Right, right…” He sat the cloth down, folding it into a thinner strip before hopping back up.

As Hyakkimaru pushed his long bangs out of his face, Dororo slipped the fabric over his eyes. “Let me know if it’s too tight, okay bro? I gotta get it pretty close so it doesn’t fall, but I don’t want it to hurt you.”

“Is that why you’re always climbing on him?” Tahomaru grinned wryly, mischief Nui hadn’t even known he had creeping into his voice.

Dororo paused, glaring at him before very pointedly turning back to Hyakkimaru, arms stiff as he visibly resisted the urge to pull the strip tight on reflex.

“That feel okay?” he asked when he was done.

Hyakkimaru took his hands away from his hair, bringing them to where the cloth now covered his eyes, patting it lightly, then pressing harder, running his fingers along the material several times. There was a soft sigh.

“Good! I’m glad!” The child bounced on his heels a little. “So then can we take you outside?”

In an instant, he had stiffened, fingers freezing midway down the cloth.

“We can take you back inside if it’s still too much,” Tahomaru offered.

A few seconds later, he pushed himself to his feet, reaching out his hands for his brother and friend and pulling them to their feet.

“Hey, Mr. Jukai? Is it okay if we take bro outside?”

“If he’s willing to go. Just be sure you don’t push them too hard. Your brothers are still recovering,” Jukai replied, not looking up from his examining Hyogo.

“Right! I’ll drag them back if they look like they’re gonna drop!” he chirped, ignoring Tahomaru’s protests as they headed out.

_Your brothers_. She hadn’t missed what Jukai said. Then, Dororo was as much a part of her eldest’s family as Tahomaru or Jukai was, rather than simply being a friend he had met along the way. Had the doctor raised him, too, then? Or was he the same as Tahomaru, growing up elsewhere and grafted in later?

Would it be the same, if he had grown up in her home, rather than with the doctor, or would that child never have come into the picture at all? Really, _could_ she even wish for something like that? The image of her husband, sitting atop his horse and ordering his eldest’s death as the goddess of mercy cracked beneath her fingers, came unbidden to her.

No, she didn’t think she could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of Nui's thought process, particularly around Hyakkimaru, is inspired at least in part by spacelionloveshermulletson on tumblr, who posted some headcanons regarding her relationship to Tahomaru, with references to Nui's reaction to Hyakki immediately post-organ-reaping. A big learning curve for her at this point is figuring out how to learn more about her sons, but not invading their privacy. In some ways, she reminds me a lot of Jukai, simultaneously wanting to mend things and semi-convinced she's going to make them worse by trying, so I think that influenced how I wrote her.
> 
> Kagemitsu's ordering Hyakkimaru's death in their encounter at Banmon, referenced here, is largely based on the stage play's version of the events, where he not only shouts the order basically in his face, but his soldiers also pretty much attack him like an animal, sort of in the same vein as his fight with Hyogo, Mutsu, and Tahomaru in episode 18.
> 
> I'm also realizing I may need to do some POV-shifting in some of what I do next. I can already think of some scenes where it might be better to do them from one of the boys' perspectives, or even Hyogo or Mutsu's. So I'm a little excited do do that!
> 
> In any event, please let me know what you think!  
~Rin


	3. Father and Son

Of all the ways Jukai had expected to reunite with his son, pulling his unconscious body from a burning building, which he and his brother had set, no less, had not been one of them. When he had originally ventured into Daigo’s territory, he hadn’t entirely known why he had done it. He had wondered since, off and on, if something else had pushed him to go that way, or if he’d secretly hoped to cross paths with the boys once more, but the one thing he knew was that if he hadn’t come there, if he hadn’t seen the smoke and followed it, both Hyakkimaru and Tahomaru would be dead.

It still didn’t make up for all the evil he had committed under Lord Shiba, but it was at least one thing more which would not have been better if he had died.

When Hyakkimaru had cried for him several nights later, he knew it was foolish to have wished himself in their place even for a moment.

He had worked with them since on a series of motion exercises, balance exercises, and strength exercises. Once Hyakkimaru’s hands were fully healed, he was considering teaching him to write with a pen and ink, if he could develop the fine motor skills to do so. He had been able to write in the dirt before, but Jukai could remember he had always struggled with chopsticks. How did holding a pen compare to that? It wasn’t something he’d ever had to think about.

And of course, he had also started crafting prosthetics for Tahomaru’s retainers, Hyogo and Mutsu. Hyogo’s size posed a bit of a challenge for him. There was his muscle mass, his larger bone structure, but then there was the issue of the arm needing to be _usable _as much as if not more than it needed to match his remaining arm.

Neither of them had ever volunteered how they lost their arms in the first place. He knew the injuries were fresh, he knew Hyogo’s looked like it had been mauled too badly to save, and Mutsu’s had effectively been dead from just above her elbow, despite no symptoms of having contracted anything. He knew there had been a horse which had turned into a demon, as he had seen the body before it was removed.

But neither of them would say how they had come to lose their arms to a demon horse.

In the end, it wasn’t either of them who had told him, or even Tahomaru, but his own son, who had told him, “Horse bit at me. But bit Hyogo, not me.”

“The horse attacked you, but it got Hyogo instead?” Jukai asked.

When Hyakkimaru nodded, he hadn’t quite looked at him. That was only unusual in the sense that it was something which had changed since he’d regained his eyes. He suspected that between his soul-sight from before and the sight he had now, he no longer knew where to look.

“Then Hyogo protected you,” Jukai observed, feeling a surge of gratitude. Perhaps he was still not well-understood by most, but at least he was able to find allies, even friends, where he went.

“Mm,” Hyakkimaru nodded again, his right hand trailing up his left arm, nails digging in where his hand touched skin.

Jukai frowned. “What’s wrong, Hyakkimaru?”

Instead of answering, his frown had deepened, nails scratching harsher against his arm. Just as he reached to stop him, his mouth began working the way it had when he’d struggled to speak before. “Ssorry…” The word slipped out as he’d taken his hand off his arm, checking to make sure he hadn’t broken the skin.

He was tempted to tell him he didn’t need to be sorry, he just needed to be more careful with his body, but he had his suspicions that wasn’t what he was apologizing for.

“Why?” he asked instead.

He hadn’t been able to answer. Jukai supposed there were some things that were still a bit too raw. Or perhaps they were too much for him to put into words, or some combination of the two.

Nevertheless, he found himself persisting. “Because your friend was hurt protecting you?”

“Mm,” he nodded, still watching his fingers.

What should he say to that? What was there he _could _say?

“I…do not. Fight well,” he continued, mumbling. “For long time.”

“Ah.” Perhaps there was nothing he could say in that moment, and it was best to return to the way he had understood things before. He put a hand over Hyakkimaru’s shoulder, rubbing a small circle and watching as tension drained out of him. “Then it wasn’t just what happened with the horse.”

Hyakkimaru shook his head, curling his fingers again. But this time, he gripped at the hem of his kimono instead of at his skin.

He could not answer for Mutsu or Hyogo, even if he’d wanted to. Nor could he answer for anything that had happened while they were separated, not when he didn’t know. Not unless Hyakkimaru or one of his brothers chose to explain it. But even now, there was one thing he could do.

“Do you remember what I told you when you first introduced your brothers to me?” he asked. As much as his mind screamed at him to stop interfering, that he was only going to make things worse and that Hyakkimaru would volunteer the information in his own when he was ready, he couldn’t quite make himself believe it. This was different, though he couldn’t say why.

“…Not a demon, I’m your son.”

“Do you think there’s anything you’ve done that would change that?” The question had been rhetorical. He hoped it would have been clear what answer he was expecting.

Yet he watched as his son’s grip tightened and his mouth worked for an answer. Of course he wouldn’t have understood that. Not with everything that had happened. Jukai wondered what he’d really been afraid of the night he’d cried for him in his sleep.

“Hyakkimaru,” he said, pulling him to his chest and resting his hand on the back of his head. He’d made a mistake in asking the question, but he could choose to correct it now. “There is nothing you’ve done that would change that.”

If someone who had done the kinds of things he had could be forgiven, there was nothing that would stop him from extending the same to his child. Hyakkimaru knew what he had done. He may not have understood the magnitude of it, may not have had the experiences to understand that—and Jukai prayed he never would—but he could at least understand the effect it had on him. The guilt he still felt even today, the thoughts he still had to push back. Hyakkimaru didn’t need to live with that.

When his arms wrapped around him to return the gesture, Jukai couldn’t help noticing how strange it still was to feel skin and bone through his clothing, rather than wood. Beyond that, there was a fierceness to his own grip, as if he could have latched onto the very words he’d given him.

It wouldn’t erase all of his guilt. Jukai knew that from experience. But it didn’t mean he had to sit by and let himself be consumed as his father had done for years before him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd been struggling with the third chapter for awhile before realizing that if I ever want this fic to go anywhere, I need to be willing to have more than one POV character. (Nui has the slight misfortune of being in a position narratively that, at this point in the story, means she is unlikely to hear some of the things that need to be said to keep this going.) I had about three different versions of chapter three besides this, one of which is becoming part of the fourth chapter, and two of which may show up at some other point. 
> 
> It's admittedly a little strange to be back on this one, as the last time I touched this fic was shortly before I left my housing at school in March, with the first half of what you see here being the result of that. I'm glad to have finally been able to pick it back up this past week.
> 
> It is possible that Mutsu and/or Hyogo will also end up becoming POV characters in this fic, as I'm realizing I set some things up here that may require them. 
> 
> In any event, please let me know what you think!  
~Rin


	4. Perspective

There was so much she still had to learn, about both her sons, really. But with Tahomaru, she could at least figure out what would make him shrink in on himself or hesitate to answer. That he needed reassurance, needed to hear things in words, but too much—and especially too much at once—would confuse him. If he started to retreat, if he put Hyakkimaru between himself and her—physically or verbally—then she needed to step back and let him have a moment.

In a sense, in at least some things, she could _read _Tahomaru.

Hyakkimaru was another story entirely. She had seen him with Dororo and Tahomaru, but that didn’t mean she could understand him without their reactions to read—or for him to react to. He would play off their excitement, or concern, but the way he would react on his own? She couldn’t tell until the moment he recoiled that this was what he would do.

But obviously, he didn’t recoil from _everything_, and it wasn’t completely unpredictable. She only had to observe any of his interactions with Tahomaru to know that much. It wasn’t even all sudden movements, not with the way Dororo would jump up and climb on him.

That still didn’t mean she could read him. Not the way that she could with Tahomaru.

She thought back to what Dororo had said to her when she’d taken him from her husband’s cells, after she, Mutsu, and Hyogo had parted ways. Actually, she thought with a smile, he’d said quite a bit, but there was one thing in particular which stuck out to her. It was when she had told him how, in the moments before the demons had taken his body, she had been certain she’d heard him cry, how even after they had taken him, even with no eyes, ears, nose, skin…she had looked at that tiny form, and felt he was the most precious thing.

Dororo had squirmed a bit, chewing at the inside of his cheek and scratching along his arm before answering. “You should tell him that. Oh, but, also…you, um, you know he’s not…still a baby, right?”

The way his eyebrows raised as he peeked at her from under his bangs, she had barely been able to stop herself from laughing. Almost immediately, she’d felt that would have been the wrong response—after all, she had just betrayed her husband, released his prisoner, and was going to meet the son he had discarded, and the one he hadn’t known had betrayed him. There was a chance they could be captured or killed before she ever reunited with either of them.

But truthfully…_did _she understand that? She was tempted to say yes, of course. She’d watched him at sixteen years old, grappling with a glowing, snarling fox demon and outfighting her youngest. But she had also watched him digging his nails into his own arms, hiding them behind his back, shrinking from her when she called his name, unconscious, crying for a father he called his mother…

No, she understood he was not a baby—even as her mind rebelled and cried out that she hadn’t seen him grow up. Which was absurd. She hadn’t seen Tahomaru growing up either, not really, yet she knew the Tahomaru who had left months ago would not have been able to hold out his hand and tell her to wait while he calmed his older brother.

That was what it came down to, wasn’t it? Her boys had grown up, and she had missed it.

She took a breath. Dwelling on that wouldn’t give her back those years, and it wouldn’t fix anything between them now. _But could someone like her fix anything anyway?_ She swallowed the thought and turned to watch her boys as they sparred.

In the early morning light, it was easier for Hyakkimaru to move and to practice things without having to tie anything over his eyes. Beyond that, it was easier for him to relearn everything with sight when fewer people were up and about. It was less movement, less noise, less distraction. Less scrutiny, perhaps.

Tahomaru wasn’t fighting at his full strength. She had seen enough of his training matches to know that much, even if the memories seemed like someone else’s. Likely, Hyakkimaru was fighting slower as well. No, she was certain of that. She’d seen him fight at Banmon, when his opponent had been…

It wasn’t the same. Though, now that she thought about it, she hadn’t been able to read Hyakkimaru then, either.

_“You know he’s not…still a baby, right?”_ Dororo’s question came to her again.

_Did_ she know it? Perhaps, that day at Banmon, some part of her _had _expected her baby, had wanted so badly to see him in the young man in front of her…Was she really any different than her former midwife, cradling that bloodied rock and murmuring about what the demons had stolen?

She turned and headed back towards the village. It wasn’t doing any good for her to watch them sparring, not when her mind kept supplying flashes of Banmon, images of her youngest hunting her eldest from a time she hadn’t been able to tell reality from dreams. Mutsu and Hyogo’s explanation ought to have put those out of her head. If not that, then watching Tahomaru sitting down with him on the battlefield, remaining beside him in his sickbed, taking his hands as he walked blindfolded—those images should have put it out.

So then why hadn’t they? She forced herself to take a breath. There was no reason it had to stay this way forever.

When she reached the place that had become his temporary clinic, Jukai had been working on a patient, and so Nui had opted to wait outside until he had finished with them.

Was it really her place to seek him out to begin with?

The young man hadn’t left more than a few minutes later, yet she was certain that, had it been any longer, she would have gone to seek out something else to do. Even now, she hesitated a moment before asking if she could enter. As an afterthought, she added, “I’m not needing treatment. There were just a few things I had wanted to discuss.”

“Of course,” Jukai answered. “I hope you don’t mind if I clean up my workspace while we talk?”

She shook her head, and he got to work.

“I was wondering if you could tell me a little about my eldest.” What he was like growing up, how to speak with him, anything, really.

“Ah. So much has changed in such a short amount of time, I don’t know that I could tell you anything that would be of help to you.”

A small distress fluttered within her. “I’d still like to hear it.”

Jukai smiled for a moment, pausing as if remembering something amusing. “Hyakkimaru has always been curious, even as a small child. Sometimes a bit too curious for his own good, when he ended up finding something dangerous. I’ll admit, he was quite the handful, even as quiet as he was.”

“That almost sounds like Tahomaru.” Except, perhaps, for being unusually quiet. She had at least one hazy memory of him in the trees, Mutsu scrambling up after him, the servants crying out. She wished she could remember what she had done when she’d seen him.

“He learned some words through writing. I’d always wondered if he wanted more of them. The way he is with his writing now, I think he did.”

“How is his writing?” She found her curiosity springing up. How many words did he know? Did he read? And how did he manage reading when he was blind and deaf?

“I think he still prefers the way he learned it before. Hyakkimaru’s fingers are still new to him, and he wants to trace the characters, rather than looking at them. But he does recognize them, when he’s allowed to.” Jukai paused.

“I think,” he said, “I think that, likely as not, once he’s become familiar with you, he’ll try to show you what he’s learned. Dororo had told me that he told him his name a week or two into their travel together, so I wouldn’t assume…”

He suddenly cut himself off, as if he’d overstepped and just realized it.

“I see,” she replied. Then it was much the same as it had been with Tahomaru, but at the same time, different. She supposed that much should have been obvious. Still, it was a relief to know for certain.

She wouldn’t dare to hope just yet that he would come to see her as a mother. But perhaps it wasn’t as impossible as it had seemed before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something I've thought about quite a bit based on the finale of the anime and the stage play is that I'm not sure if Nui fully processes who Hyakkimaru is at that point in time. I think cognitively, she understands he would have kept growing up, but because she thought he was dead for most of that past sixteen years, some part of her mind has frozen him as a baby and is constantly being reminded, actually, he's a teenager now. 
> 
> I also think she doesn't really give herself enough credit for the kind of learning curve she's on. There's one son she's trying to reconcile with after fifteen years of things being kind of Not Great, and another who she's not only trying to reconcile with, but who also may not even see her as his mother (both due to the events surrounding things, and due to the way he conceptualizes family) and is also operating on a very steep learning curve of regaining a ton of body parts in a short amount of time and everything associated with that. So like, "Yes, back off, but at the same time it's not all you."
> 
> I would like to give her some more interactions with her sons in the next chapter or so, but I would also very much like to be able to include Jukai and Dororo, but also Hyogo and Mutsu in some capacity. I'm sure I'll get to an actual "plot plot" at some point, considering these kids went and burned down the house they grew up in, the deal's been broken, and their biological dad went off to fight a battle and has to come back at some point, but I'm not sure yet when that will be or what that will look like.
> 
> In the meantime, I'll continue with the slow-paced family reconciliation stuff.
> 
> In any event, please let me know what you think!  
~Rin


End file.
